Mau I: My Father Bleeds History; The Importance of Themes
Maus I: My Father Bleeds History is a graphic novel written by Art Spiegelman that exhibits the story of Spiegelman’s father, Vladek, and his struggle as a Jewish man during the Holocaust. Maus follows the narrative of Art, or Artie as Vladek calls him and he time that they spend together while Art interviews his father with regard to his experience leading up to, and the start of the holocaust. In this graphic novel there are serval themes that play a highly important role in the representation of characters and in the furthering of the readers understanding of the novel. Although several themes are present in the novel; Race, Power, and Morality, are amongst the most predominant …show more content…
Moreover, the lessons learned from these themes educate the reader and act as a another layer to the stories girth. Maus, the story about heart wrenching and devastating holocaust experiences captures the unavoidable theme of racism as it echo’s throughout not only the story that blades tells, but also thought this time period. The Nazis goal was to eliminate the jewish population as they believed that Jewish people were sub-par humans. Racism is the most dominating theme in this book and the most obvious to the reader’s eye. Not only is race a very important topic in the history of the holocaust, but it used and incorporated throughout Maus in several ways. Spiegelman portrays the characters in Maus as animals; each race and ethnicity are portrayed as a separate animal. Moreover, the assigned animals to each race furthers as an underlying message in the novel. Spiegelman illustrates Jewish people as mice, Germans as cats, Americans as dogs, the polish as pigs and so forth. Maus plays on the Nazi’s racist idea that Jews are “vermin,” by rendering the Jewish characters into mice. Furthermore, An important symbol within this theme is the idea and message that the holocaust was referred to as a game of cat and mouse where the Nazis were the predator …show more content…
Power in Maus also acts as a stage to teach readers lessons on the worth of objects such as money. In Maus, under the example of Anja, Vladek and their son Reushie the family was able to survive based on their ability to not only pay members of the polish society to protect them, but in some instances their ability to pay their own family members to protect them. Money was a significant source of power not only for the jewish who were trying to hide, but also for the Nazi soldiers who held power in Germany at the time. Furthermore, the presence of power can be felt throughout the book when one refers to the power that the Nazi soldiers obtained. Vladek shares with Art a memory of his times in hiding, he recalled an order from the germans. “ORDER: All Jews of Sosnowiec must be relocated into the Stara Sosnowiec quarter by January 1, 1942. Non-Jews will be moved into vacated premises” (I.4.84). Vladek reminisced on how the Nazis continued their oppression of the Jews by taking away everything they owned, their homes, their belongings and moved them into ghettoes, confined from the rest of the town. Furthermore, the power that the Nazis practiced throughout the book cannot go unseen; Vladek remembers the time when Father-in law told him, “Don’t you know? ALL Jewish businesses have been taken over by ‘Aryan managers’…” (I.4.78). This was a very intriguing part of the novel as one is able to see to
Maus I: My Father Bleeds History is a graphic novel written by Art Spiegelman that exhibits the story of Spiegelman’s father, Vladek, and his struggle as a Jewish man during the Holocaust. Maus follows the narrative of Art, or Artie as Vladek calls him and he time that they spend together while Art interviews his father with regard to his experience leading up to, and the start of the holocaust. In this graphic novel there are serval themes that play a highly important role in the representation of characters and in the furthering of the readers understanding of the novel. Although several themes are present in the novel; Race, Power, and Morality, are amongst the most predominant …show more content…
Moreover, the lessons learned from these themes educate the reader and act as a another layer to the stories girth. Maus, the story about heart wrenching and devastating holocaust experiences captures the unavoidable theme of racism as it echo’s throughout not only the story that blades tells, but also thought this time period. The Nazis goal was to eliminate the jewish population as they believed that Jewish people were sub-par humans. Racism is the most dominating theme in this book and the most obvious to the reader’s eye. Not only is race a very important topic in the history of the holocaust, but it used and incorporated throughout Maus in several ways. Spiegelman portrays the characters in Maus as animals; each race and ethnicity are portrayed as a separate animal. Moreover, the assigned animals to each race furthers as an underlying message in the novel. Spiegelman illustrates Jewish people as mice, Germans as cats, Americans as dogs, the polish as pigs and so forth. Maus plays on the Nazi’s racist idea that Jews are “vermin,” by rendering the Jewish characters into mice. Furthermore, An important symbol within this theme is the idea and message that the holocaust was referred to as a game of cat and mouse where the Nazis were the predator …show more content…
Power in Maus also acts as a stage to teach readers lessons on the worth of objects such as money. In Maus, under the example of Anja, Vladek and their son Reushie the family was able to survive based on their ability to not only pay members of the polish society to protect them, but in some instances their ability to pay their own family members to protect them. Money was a significant source of power not only for the jewish who were trying to hide, but also for the Nazi soldiers who held power in Germany at the time. Furthermore, the presence of power can be felt throughout the book when one refers to the power that the Nazi soldiers obtained. Vladek shares with Art a memory of his times in hiding, he recalled an order from the germans. “ORDER: All Jews of Sosnowiec must be relocated into the Stara Sosnowiec quarter by January 1, 1942. Non-Jews will be moved into vacated premises” (I.4.84). Vladek reminisced on how the Nazis continued their oppression of the Jews by taking away everything they owned, their homes, their belongings and moved them into ghettoes, confined from the rest of the town. Furthermore, the power that the Nazis practiced throughout the book cannot go unseen; Vladek remembers the time when Father-in law told him, “Don’t you know? ALL Jewish businesses have been taken over by ‘Aryan managers’…” (I.4.78). This was a very intriguing part of the novel as one is able to see to